Lee Harvey Oswald coffin up for auction

The coffin in which Lee Harvey Oswald was buried for 20 years has been put up for auction.

According to Sky News, the starting price for Oswald's casket is £600 and bidders will be able to compete for the plain pine box on December 16.

Oswald was arrested for the assassination of US president John F. Kennedy in 1963. He was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby days later.

Laura Yntema, auction manager at California-based Nate D. Sanders, said: "There's just a lot of interest in Kennedy and anything to do with his assassination."

Oswald's coffin was dug up in October 1981 after a legal dispute between his brother Robert and widow Marina over claims that a lookalike had been buried in the alleged assassin's place.

Medical examination showed that the body was that of Oswald, who was reburied in Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth, Texas, in a new coffin. The undertakers who dealt with the second burial are the party selling the first casket.